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Obviously, he wised up. The couple
will celebrate their 20th wedding anniver
-
sary this year, two days after Christmas. "It
took me all of those years to realize she was
the one I needed the whole time," Bean-
blossom says.
Painful reminders
July 24, 2002.
Nothing has been the same for Bean-
blossom since that day at the La Porte (Ind.)
County Fair. Beanblossom was there for a
harness race, but Lisa was concerned be
-
fore it even began. "The track was bad to
start with. They'd had a lot of rain. They
were working on it by dragging bedsprings
around the track," she says. "It seemed to me
an accident was going to happen — it was
just a matter of when."
Her fears came true. In David's race on
the limestone track, the horse of the driver
in front of him tumbled, causing a chain
reaction that launched Beanblossom out of
his sulky (the two-wheel cart in which he
sits directly behind the horse). He flew high
into the air after his horse, Bubba Tubba,
trampled the horse that had fallen.
What happened next can be best de
-
scribed as violent pandemonium. Bean-
blossom was thrown into a metal guardrail
won more than $1 million from horses he
trained. He eventually moved to New York
to train horses at Yonkers Raceway, but
he wasn't in his happy place. His second
marriage — which included the birth of a
daughter, Nicole — was ending in divorce.
To find solace during those troubled
times, the self-professed childhood book
-
worm (his favorite was "Barney Beagle")
found himself at the library less and less,
and at the bar more and more. He became
a binge drinker. "Tequila. Chased it with
beer. Not every night. But when I drank,
as everything I did in life, whether it was
training horses or being a golf course super
-
intendent, I always gave 120 percent. It was
the same way with bad things. I didn't know
how to quit," he says.
Beanblossom moved back to Indiana
in 1995, and started harness racing again.
And, at a high school reunion, he recon
-
nected with Lisa, the sweetheart of his
youth. "We had dated in high school, but it
got way too serious. I needed to sow my wild
oats," he says.
Lisa, meanwhile, had an inkling that he
was meant for her. "Even in junior high, I
think I knew he was the one," she says. "He
wrote me a love letter. It showed how much
compassion he has, how caring he is."
(for safety reasons, nowadays these are made
of more flexible material), leaving blood
trickling down his left ankle and ripping
his black, size 9½ boots off his feet. Perhaps
the most gruesome detail is that although
he was lying on his back, Beanblossom's feet
were twisted, facing the ground.
"I have not seen feet facing the other
way, but I have seen dislocated hips and
knees facing the wrong way. Very sicken
-
ing," says Steve Wolf, a harness racing ex-
pert who this month will be inducted into
the national Harness Racing Hall of Fame.
As people scrambled to aid Beanblos
-
som, another harness racer told Lisa, who
had hurried to the scene from the opposite
side of the track, that he thought her hus
-
band had died in the crash.
"One of the guys said, 'Do you want me
to call an ambulance?' I said, 'Yeah. He's
not getting up,'" Lisa says. Even now, speak
-
ing about it is difficult for her. She pauses.
Gets choked up.
Beanblossom's brand-new Columbia
blue, royal blue and bright gold one-piece
racing uniform had been cut off his body
by EMTs. The blunt force of the wreck had
torn chunks out of his riding helmet. He
was rushed to the hospital, where doctors
determined he had suffered a concussion, a
40 GOLF COURSE MANAGEMENT 07.17
Although not the harness race in which David Beanblossom was injured, this photo presents the peril involved. This accident occurred in November
2016 at Northside Downs in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. All three horses suffered scrapes and abrasions. One driver suffered a fractured hip, broken ribs and broken collarbone;
another broke ribs and had a broken vertebra in his back. The third driver suffered a concussion. Photo courtesy of Steve Wolf